Grub Kitchen has just opened, serving up bug bilinis, cumin-spiked mealworm hummus, and cricket and chickpea felafels.

While it may feel like a gimmick, there’s some serious research behind the Wales-based restaurant, with the owners claiming they want to make insects normal rather than novelty.

Grub Kitchen is a joint project between chef Andy Holcroft and Sarah Beynon, a research associate at the University of Oxford who also runs Dr Beynon’s Farm, 100 acre working farm with a focus on sustainable agriculture.

“Grub’s innovative restaurant champions and promotes sustainable local produce as well as the practice of eating insects which is known as entomophagy. We aim to turn entomophagy from a novelty to normalcy integrating the many various types of edible insects with twists on our most popular and well-loved dishes,” the website states.

Chef Andy has been grounding the crickets into flour for crepes, and turning bamboo worms into fudge ice-cream. There’ll also be insect taster plates, and sweets, such as Welsh cakes with cinnamon mealworms, on the menu, plus crunchy critter granola to sprinkle on salads.

Writing for the Conversation, Dr Beynon serves up an unpalatable proposition for the non-believers.

“Even if you don’t think that you want to veer into the world of entomophagy, I’m afraid I’ve got news for you: you already are. You may be eating up to 60 fragments of insects in every 100g of chocolate and whenever you eat a fig, you are eating remnants of a fig wasp.”

Before you head outside with a plastic container to catch your own, Dr Beynon recommends that you only eat insects specifically bred for human consumption. In Australia, you can buy the critters whole or in protein powder form.